Dance language of honey bees

Mainly the honey bees dance in two forms for the food location. That are Round Dance and Waggle Dance. Round dance is related to the distance of the food location but the Waggle dance is related to both the distance and direction of the food location.

2. Dance language of
honey bees
Name-MamtaSahoo
Class-+3 3
rd
year science
Roll no-BS16-093

3. Contents:
1.Introduction
2.The round dance
3.The waggle dance
4.Conclusion

4. Introduction:
❖Dance language of honey bee is a type of social behaviour.
❖It is used by an individual worker to communicate at least
two items of information to one or more other workers :
the distance and the direction of the location (usually food
source of patch of flower)
❖In 1973 the Austrian scientist Karl Von Frisch was
awarded Nobel Prize for his research on the honey bee
waggle dance.
❖There are two dances which are performed by the honey
bees:
1.The round dance
2.The waggle dance

5. The round dance :
❖When a food source is very close to the bee hive
(i.e., less than 50 meters away), a forager
performs a round dance.
❖She does so by running around in narrow circles,
suddenly reversing direction to her original
course.
❖She may repeat the dance several times at the
same location or move to an other location to
repeat the dance .
❖After the round dance has ended, she often
distributes food to the bees following her.
❖A round dance communicates only the distance
but no direction.

6. The waggle dance :
❖The waggle dance or wag tail dance, is
performed by bees foraging at food
sources that are over 150 meters away
from the hive.
❖This dance communicates both distance
and direction to the other worker bees.
Distance:
❖A bee that performs a waggle dance runs
straight ahead for a short distance,
returns in a semicircle to the starting
point, runs again through the straight
course, then makes a semicircle in the
opposite direction to complete a full,
figure eight circuit.

7. ❖While running the straight line course of
dance, the bee’s body, especially the
abdomen, wags vigorously sideways.
❖This vibration gives the tail-wagging
motion
❖As the distance of the food source increases,
the duration of the waggling portion of the
dance also increases.
❖Distance is indicated by the length of time it
takes to make one circuit.
❖For example, a bee may dance 8-9 circuits
in 15 seconds for a food source 200 meters
away, 4-5 circuits for 1000m and 3 for 2000
m.

8. Direction:
❖The orientation of the dancing bee during
the straight portion of her waggle dance
indicates the location of the food source
relative to the sun.
❖The angle that the bee adopts, relative to
vertical, represents the angle to the flowers
relative to the direction of the sun outside
of the hive.
❖A forager recruiting to a food source in
the same direction as the sun , will
perform a dance with the waggle run
portion directly up on the comb.

9. ❖Conversely, if the food source were
located directly away from the sun, the
straight run would be directed vertically
down.
❖If the food source were 60 degrees to the
left of the sun, the waggle run would be
60 degrees to the left of vertical.
❖Because the direction information is
relative to the sun’s position, a forager’s
dance for a particular resource will
change over time.
❖This is because the sun’s position moves
over the course of the day.

10. ❖Eg.
•A food source located due east will have foragers
dance approximately straight up in the morning
(because the sun rises in the east),but will have
foragers dance approximately straight down in
the late afternoon(because the sun sets in the west)

11. Conclusion:
The honey bees perform the two dances with the help
of the sun, so they have a special property called as
light vision property.

12. Thank you ……